By Gerry Downing Morning Star letter (expanded

Fiona O’Connor, in her review of Martin Doyle’s book, Dirty Linen speaks of “Northern Ireland’s most atrocious period of sectarian and political violence, the 1970s” (M Star Nov 22). But it wasn’t “sectarian violence”, it was Loyalist supremacist fascistic violence directed against the nationalist community, orcastrated by the British state to maintain an illegitimate state, the British-occupied six north eastern counties of the Irish nation.

In October 1967 Protestants were given 14 out of 15 council houses in Kinnard Park despite assurances given to the local priest, that there would be equity. A 19-year-old, single Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, the secretary of a Unionist politician, was allocated a three bedroom house. Catholic families were outraged at the blatant injustice. The Goodfellows, with three young children, and the McKennas, with a baby, were supported by Austin Curry, the nationalist MP an Derry radical activist Fionnbarra O Dochartaigh. Curry and others squatted her house and were brutally evicted by the RUC; BBC news featured it.

By the late 1960s a mass movement had grown against this blatant discrimination, gerrymandering and other privileges for the Protestant community. Peaceful protests was met with ferociously violent state attacks. Inspired by the civil rights movement in the US a Peoples Democracy march from Belfast to Derry was attacked at Burntollet Bridge on January 4, 1969, by Ulster Loyalist thugs, urged on by the ranting Loyalist bigots Ian Paisley and Major Ronald Bunting. Off duty B Specials took part and the RUC stood by to prevent what was the first of many such attacks.

Bunting’s son, Ronnie, took a different road, Wikipedia informs us :

“Ronnie Bunting (1948-1980) was a Protestant Irish republican and a socialist activist in Ireland. He became a member of the Official IRA in the early 1970s and was a founder-member of the INLA in 1974. He became leader of the INLA in 1978 and was assassinated in 1980 aged 32.”

The UDA claimed the assassination but still  it was not made illegal until 1992 – MI6 directed it. The civil rights movement was winning over big sections of the Protestant community, so it was necessary for the British state in alliance with the Loyalist neo-fascist supremacist thugs to make sure this did not develop.

In August 1971 342 nationalists and no loyalists were interned without trial. When it ended in December 1975 1,874 nationalist had been interned only 107 loyalists.

On January 30 1972 the British army’s Parachute Regiment murdered 14 peaceful demonstrators in Derry in the full view of the whole world and arguments for turning the other cheek were then obviously ridiculous against the corrupt judge Widgery who endorsed these murders – no one has been found guilty as yet of these murders. 

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (379 to 1,500 dead), took place on April 13 1919 in Amritsar. Reginald Dyer (Co. Cork), had carried out the massacre on Michael O’Dwyer’s (Co. Tipperary) orders. Lord Hunter, chairman of the commission of inquiry, alibied Dyer who was only ‘punished’ by being denied a knighthood and promotion. Dyer, ‘the Butcher of Amritsar’ openly boasted not only of his pre-planned murders but followed up with flogging school children, mass arrests, torture, and forcing all the ‘natives’ to crawl down the lane where a white missionary woman, Marcella Sherwood, was assaulted.

Udham Singh shot O’Dwyer at Caxton Hall in London on March 13, 1940. This national hero in India was hanged on July 31 for this act of revolutionary justice.

Fiona’s description of the Glenanne Gang as, “setting off in retaliatory barbarity to the IRA” has got the wrong barbarians; the British state forces in MI6 directed this gang who murdered 120 random Catholic nationalists precisely to inflame inter-communal violence. As for the Abercorn Restaurant bombing on March 4, 1972, Fiona forgets to tell us that the four women she named, the two killed and the two who lost limbs, were Catholics.

Why would the IRA, who denied doing it while the UVF claimed they did it, bomb a nationalist pub? Anyone with knowledge of how the MI6/MI5 operates understands this was a false flag operation, blame the IRA to further promote intercommunal violence and get revolution off the agenda. This worked, tit-for tat killings kicked off and elements of the IRA committed acts of sectarian violence like the Kingsmill massacre of 11 Protestant workers on January 5 1976.

   Fionna likes Hannah Arendt’s comment on “the banality of evil”, which  equates all violence and ultimately prefers the violence of the oppressor as in Gaza today. Remember she was Martin Heidegger’s lover before Hitler came to power in 1933. As a Jew she had to flee for her life and Heidegger did nothing to help her. He joined the Nazis himself on May 1 1933 and never resigned. The Allies dissolved the party in 1945.

   Disgracefully Arendt returned to his bed post WWII (her husband wasn’t pleased), and penned the appalling Heidegger at Eighty tribute in 1969 to defend his record. Such ‘liberal’ capitalists accept that in times of crisis fascism may be necessary to prevent revolution. In an address to 600 unemployed workers drafted into the ‘National Socialist labour service’, i.e. slave labour work camps, in January 1934 Heidegger said: [1]

“This will … must be our innermost certainty and never-faltering faith. For in what this will wills, we are only following the towering will of our Führer. To be his loyal followers means: to will that the German people shall find again, as a people of labour, its organic unity, its simple dignity, and its true strength; and that, as a state of labour, it shall secure for itself permanence and greatness. To the man of this unprecedented will, to our Führer Adolf Hitler-a three-fold ‘Sieg Heil!” [2]

   You couldn’t get more Nazi than that. Of course Fiona is correct to observe that the Troubles Act now proposed is mainly to cover up the British state’s murders in the Troubles. But that is what she seems to be doing in equating, or even preferring the violence of the oppressor, the British state’s MI6,  to the violence of the oppressed, the IRA.

Notes

[1] See https://socialist fight.com/2015/07/20/heidegger-the-nazi-reply-to-john-minahane/

[2] The Heidegger Review Issue No 1. Athol books, Feb. 2014 ▲

Following the massacre riots broke out and several white people were killed. A white missionary woman, Marcella Sherwood, was severely assaulted on April 19 1919. The Army then murdered a further 20 Indians. The ‘Butcher of Amritsar’ began flogging school children, mass arrests, torture, and forcing all the ‘natives’ to crawl down the lane where Sherwood was attacked (above).